Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

Johnson’s reform of the draft system removed exemptions and greatly increased the chances that everyone had to be called upon to serve. While perhaps normatively desirable and creating a brake against adventurous foreign policies in the manner suggested by Kant, for a leader already at war, shifting the burden of fighting from the poor and minorities (who, despite Johnson’s civil rights laws, still voted at lower rates) to middle-class families from whom he drew his support, was political suicide. The president was effectively asking middle-class families to support him as he sent their sons or the sons of their neighbors and friends to fight a very bloody war.

By spreading the burden of service more evenly, Johnson ensured that many US voters had a personal connection to someone forced to serve. This imposition of the human cost on supporters as well as opponents undermined his political support. And indeed, as we have seen, his approval rating, like Bush’s later on, was in steep decline. Unlike Bush, however, his equitable treatment of the human and financial costs of war meant that even his own partisans stopped supporting him, a consequence not suffered by Bush, who did not shift the burden of war to everyone. W insulated his backers, and in doing so, he gained the benefit of their continued loyalty. That, we believe, is the essence of what drove Johnson from office and gained Bush the electoral support and legitimacy he desired.

To be sure, both presidents did what they believed was right for America. The big difference was that Bush had the advantage that what he surely and sincerely thought was good for the country—whether it was or was not—happened also to be policies that were good for him politically. Johnson’s promoting of equality of treatment in everything the government and society did, made the United States a better place in the long run and did Johnson in politically in the short run. The remarkable aspect of his pursuit of equality is that he understood that it was likely to hurt the Democratic Party and it was likely to hurt his aspirations for a full second term. Indeed, as much as “We, the people” cry out for principled politicians, Americans rejected Lyndon Johnson exactly because he followed a principle that distributed the costs of war—admittedly an unpopular and perhaps mistaken war—not only on to his opponents but to his supporters as well.

What If?

BY SPREADING THE BURDEN OF SERVICE EVENLY, LYNDON JOHNSON ensured that many US voters had a personal connection to someone forced to serve. As we approach our conclusion and assess how to restrain overly aggressive foreign policies and wanton war making, it is worthwhile to ponder the counterfactual: could Bush have convinced the Congress and the nation to back the invasion of Iraq if Johnson’s FAIR draft system had been used? Likewise, if the Bush administration had been legislatively constrained to implement a tax surcharge across all tax brackets to cover the cost of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, would Bush’s support have remained as strong?

We know that the Afghan War was viewed by the American public as a well justified response to the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. The Iraq War did not share in that widespread support. Had President Bush been compelled to go before the public and address reasonable, external, nonpartisan estimates of the human and financial costs of both the Afghan and Iraq Wars before either began, then it seems likely that he would have found the public rallying behind the Afghan War and the public—and their representatives in Congress—becoming more reluctant to initiate a less well-justified war in Iraq. By the simple expedient of exposing his own backers to the human risks and costs of the war through a lottery system for military service, he might have found that prudent political decision making argued in favor of going ahead with the Afghan War and not going ahead with Iraq. That is, had he been made by statute to follow the path that Lyndon Johnson chose to follow—pay the financial costs for each war out-of-pocket, not by building the national debt, and pay the human costs equitably so that all segments of society were equally at risk—then we might not have had an Iraq War. It does not follow, by the way, that this also would have meant putting Bush’s reelection at risk. Indeed, it probably would have strengthened his claim for reelection and given him a stronger mandate in 2004. The nation rallied behind the strike against Afghanistan. That war did not suffer from as deep a partisan divide as did the Iraq War. Thus, a war that was justified in the eyes of the public would not have then been as detrimental to his reelection as was a war that was not well justified in the public’s estimation, just as Vietnam came to be a war not well justified by the facts in the 1960s.

Against our argument for avoiding the Iraq War by spreading the costs to everyone, some may object that it would have deprived President Bush of his objective to oust Saddam Hussein. But the facts do not seem to support that view. Interestingly, in early February 2003, the son of Hosni Mubarak, who was then Egypt’s president, met secretly with Bush with a proposal that the Hussein family would likely go into exile in Egypt if guaranteed safety and $2 billion. Such an arrangement would likely have avoided the need to invade, but Bush refused to assure their safety.65 Had Bush been looking to avoid war or had he faced the sort of requirements we have set out, this approach would have been well worth exploring rather than dismissing out of hand. Of course, the idea of protecting such an evil person as Saddam Hussein and assuring his vast wealth is exceedingly unpleasant. But in a world of difficult choices, having taken his offer to go into exile, we might then have avoided the death and destruction of the war and the subsequent instability in Iraq that followed from the failure to have a well-worked-out plan for how Iraq was to govern itself in the post–Saddam Hussein period. True as it is that getting rid of Hussein could have been a grand accomplishment, without a sound basis for Iraqi governance after Hussein, it is not evident, contrary to the claims of President Bush and his senior advisers, that the world is better off without him. Certainly it could have been, but then that required a sound and practical vision of governance that was not applied to Iraq either by Bush’s administration or the subsequent administration of President Obama. In the end, a few simple expedients and greater openness to compromise could have avoided the Iraq War, husbanded more resources for a better effort in Afghanistan, and protected American society from the deep division that Iraq foisted on it.

Chapter 6

John Kennedy and Barack Obama: Two Paths of “Peace”

I think I would have been impeached.

—John F. Kennedy

DECIDING HOW TO RESOLVE CRISES PEACEFULLY WHEN THEY INCLUDE A serious risk of leading to war is every bit as important as deciding if, when, and how to wage war. Indeed, the biggest potential wars in history are those that never happened. They were averted out of fear of their consequences or out of recognition that their outsize costs swamped any potential gains. That might have been the story of America’s Civil War and the two world wars but for two considerations: uncertainty about the resolve of the other side, and the gap between the interests of everyday people and those of individual leaders.

The avoidance of a potentially huge war is the story of President John F. Kennedy’s Cuban missile crisis in 1962. It may or may not be the story that historians will tell about the cautious actions of the United States government under Barack Obama in dealing with the interlinked tales of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, the Islamic State, renewed Sunni-Shia struggles in Iraq, and the threat of Russian expansion into its neighboring states. In these latter cases a large war may well have been averted. That is to the good as far as it goes. But was war averted in the manner most beneficial to the interests of the average American or, for that matter, the average citizen of the world? Or was war averted without regard to those broad interests, primarily serving instead the short-term electoral interests of the president’s political allies? Might the avoidance of war today precipitate a bigger, costlier war tomorrow? We explore how to answer these questions, in the process hopefully improving our ability to think through crisis management in the future.